umlaut
Syllables: um·lautUK/ˈʊm.laʊt//ˈʊm.laʊt/
umlaut noun: an assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
Noun
umlaut (plural umlauts or umlaute)
- An assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
- In fits of concealed despair that went unnoticed even by those close enough to touch, Julien cursed the language of umlauts, eszetts, and gerunds.1997, Matthew Piepenburg, Time and the Maiden, →ISBN, page 62
- A tittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether an umlaut is one or two tittles. Maybe it's a jot and a tittle side by...2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters
- The umlaut process (as above) that occurred historically in Germanic languages whereby back vowels became front vowels when followed by syllable containing a front vocoid (e.g. Germanic lūsiz > Old English lȳs(i) > Modern English lice).
- A vowel so assimilated.
- The diacritical mark ( ¨ ) placed over a vowel when it indicates a (rounded) front vowel
- Synonym of diaeresis.
- "Naïve" takes an umlaut because it is pronounced as two syllables.
- California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025
- Synonyms:
- diaeresis
Verb
umlaut (third-person singular simple present umlauts, present participle umlauting, simple past and past participle umlauted)
- To place an umlaut over (a vowel).
- We kept some of the foreign alphabet symbols such as the accented and umlauted vowels and Greek letters and used the rest of the space for more esoteric linguistic symbols such as "barred-l," and "engma."1989, Elizabeth A. Edwards, “A Computer Column for All Seasons”, in Margaret S. Boone, editor, Practicing Anthropology, volume 11, number 2
- To modify (a word) so that an umlaut is required in it.
- an umlauting vowel
- These, together with (some) Romansh lects, belong to our West Rhaetian; the /ȫ/ also supported by two lects from the Ticino which by our criteria are NWIt, and by the partially umlauting lects of Lombardy which together with (some) Engadine lects belong to our East Rhaetian.1980, Frederick B. Agard, The Genealogy of the French Language, published in Contributions to historical linguistics, →ISBN, page 222
umlaut meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Arabic and Vietnamese
umlaut in Tamil
- உயிர் மாற்றம்
umlaut in Bengali
- umlaut, vowel mutation
- অভিশ্রুতি obhisruti
umlaut in Arabic
- partial assimilation of a vowel
- مُغَيِّرَة muḡayyira
- diacritical mark
- مُغَيِّرَة muḡayyira
umlaut in Vietnamese
- partial assimilation of a vowel
- um-lau
- diacritical mark
- dấu um-lau
Examples of umlaut in a sentence
- His version of masculinity is a parody of an über male (complete with the goose-steppy authoritarian umlaut).
- His bag was graffed up with band names I didn’t recognize—lightning bolts and heavy-metal umlauts.
- It's meant to say 'Gewurztraminer', with an umlaut over the 'u'.
Synonyms of umlaut
Forms of umlaut
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | umlauts |
| plural | umlaute |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | umlauts |
| present participle | umlauting |
| past participle | umlauted |
| past | umlauted |
Origin of umlaut
Borrowed from German Umlaut in the 19ᵗʰ century, from um- or um (“around, re-, trans-”) + Laut (“sound”), from Old High German hlūt. More at loud.
Words formed from umlaut
Phrases with umlaut
Words that rhyme with umlaut
42 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- set about
- shout
- sprout
- doubt
- fill out
- grout
- pout
- devout
- drought
- gout
- nowt
- redoubt
- throughout
- without
- ablaut
- dout
- flout
- lout
- mahout
- misdoubt
- mought
- prone out
- strout
- term out
- trout
- zoom out
- 'bout
- anlaut
- aspout
- asprout
- bluff out
- chout
- dought
- knout
- kraut
- layabout
- ne'er cast a clout till May be out
- owt
- peter out
- regrout
- sout
- when in doubt, do nowt
Questions about umlaut
- What does umlaut mean?
- Umlaut means an assimilatory process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vocoid that is separated by one or more consonants.
- What is umlaut in Tamil?
- Umlaut in Tamil is உயிர் மாற்றம். See Umlaut meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is umlaut?
- Umlaut can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce umlaut?
- Umlaut is pronounced /ˈʊm.laʊt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of umlaut?
- The plural of umlaut is umlauts.
Words near umlaut in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: umlaut (page history and authors); umlaut (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); অভিশ্রুতি (Bengali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-umlaut.ogg.
Cite this entry: “umlaut.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/umlaut. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.